Robust incoherent fiber optic bundle decoder

A method of calibrating an incoherent fiber optic bundle for producing coherent images therefrom including the steps of:

• positioning the screen of a video monitor in orthogonal relation with the input end of said fiber optic bundle;
• illuminating said fiber optic bundle by sweeping said input end with white vertical and horizontal sweeps to produce an image of the output end of said fiber optic bundle on said screen;
• obtaining a set of coordinates corresponding to the center of each output fiber of the fiber optic bundle;
• acquiring an image of the output fibers of the fiber optic bundle with the input fibers focused on the illuminated screen;
• and
• producing the coordinate for the center of each output fiber from the acquired image by:
• 1) resetting the intensity of each pixel below a minimum threshold or above a maximum threshold in the image to black or white, respectively;
• 2) removing the border pixels in each output fiber to shrink their diameters;
• 3) converting the image to black and white;
• 4) compensating for speckle effects from steps 2 and 3;
• 5) removing isolated pixels from fiber centroid image;
• 6) setting the outside border pixels of said output fibers to black and white;
• and
• 7) calculating the coordinates for the center of a rectangle which would enclose each remaining set of illuminate fiber pixels.